Katie Gingrass Gallery shares art space on the first floor in the building at 241 North Broadway, yet makes a special effort to extend their gallery in the Historic Third Ward at the Coquette Café. The café's back room off the bar and side dining area also functions as an exhibition space for a wide range of Wisconsin artists. Every eight weeks the exhibitions change, and offers further opportunities to display adventurous and established artwork to reach a wider audience. On Tuesday, May 15, the current exhibition opened and featured wonderful food (brie, crackers, fruit, pizza and tiny cupcakes with frosting to be enjoyed with wine) while Roberts welcomed friends to enjoy the light repast as she chatted about her art.
Antiquing inspires Roberts and her images, where figures and objects may be painted on bar cloth (a 1940's fabric similar to burlap), historical remnants and vintage wallpaper. The large scale works incorporate other recycled “finds” that included pom pom fringe trim, cartoon cutouts, monopoly money, skirt fabric or whatever Roberts hand picks from her expansive home collections. Approximately nine paintings express Roberts' nostalgic viewpoint that introduces a narrative in her work although the images allow the viewer to add their own interpretations.
One large long rectangular artwork portrays Roberts' hat collection. A white, sculptural hat in a resale shop inspired the image titled Arsenal in her tribute to the romantic “battle gear” women might draw from to attract love in their life. The viewer smiles when she studies this imaginary dressing table, cluttered with feminine accessories and necessities, and imagines her own at home and what could be important for her own arsenal.
Stay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.
Roberts' process for her paintings begins with research on a particular image. This may mean delving into clippings from magazines or newspapers, frayed photographs, old postcards for collage and an appropriate backing and then added trimmings for each painting. She usually takes these recycled objects and rearranges, then rearranges again, until she arrives at a still life, or the final figures to place on her canvas. The second half to her process entails the actual application of pigment to a chosen canvas medium where Roberts claims she “gets lost in the process, stays in the zone and is the icing on the cake.”
The painting Angel Cake and Romeo on the South cafe wall illustrates this process. Roberts found a photograph with a handsome couple, the woman throwing her man a coquettish look over the shoulder. Smiles on their faces recall a date or honeymoon, so she researched the 1930's or '40's that revisits their clothing style. Roberts discovered that “Angel Cake” could be whispered as an endearment from a guy to a girl he liked, or liked to impress. The “Romeo” becomes self-explanatory, although in that era the term refers more to “a ladies man” than Shakespeare's dramatic and love-lost hero.
Roberts has painted all her life, and will be seen next exhibiting in the 2011 Wisconsin Visual Arts Biennial opening June 26, a juried statewide exhibit at the Anderson Arts Center in Kenosha. In the meantime, Roberts peruses antique stores and secondhand shops to add to her collections that will eventually be placed on her inventive canvases and carry their own imaginative stories into future paintings. Visitors may view the Janet Roberts exhibition through July 8 at the Coquette Café anytime during the Café's operating hours with courtesy to the patrons in their back room, or visit Katie Gingrass Gallery just two blocks west on Broadway.
